I have always been opposed to the idea of a private blog.
I follow lots of blogs that I stumbled across or discovered by clicking "next" on blogger and I like the idea that someone could have stumbled on mine that way. I also follow the blogs of lots of people I barely know IRL who would probably think I was a weirdo if they knew their blog was in my reader. I don't want someone to feel awkward that they have to delurk to get an invitation to my blog.
And yet, sending someone an invitation to view my blog feels presumptious too. Cause why should I assume anyone really gives a crap about the insane stuff that floats around in my head?
I also think private blogs are irritating because they don't appear in my blog reader. I have to make a point to check them individually, which is just more work.
BUT I also don't want to have to censor myself or worry about who is potentially reading this (that I encounter in various situations IRL). Blogger is not sophisticated enough for me to make certain content open to all and other content closed (unless I am missing something? Please let me know if I am mistaken!)
I know, I'm all over the map here.
What is prompting this?
Little birdies have pointed out internet posts written about me that range from venting about innocent school interchanges to completely false accusations and slandering of me (and my co-workers) as professionals. I do not go looking for it. I really don't. But since someone else has brought it to my attention it has caused me to wonder how easily these people who are apparently so unhappy with me could be tracking me down.
And I mean, here I am reading information that they obviously felt was somewhat private, that would never be seen by me. Who knows who could be reading this? Not that I ever write about anything work related, ever. But... I mean, some of my stuff is on the more personal side that the parents of my students don't really need to know about.
I've been googling myself with different combinations of personal information to see what comes up....
Gah. Feel free to weigh in.
6 comments:
One of my friends is a Jr High teacher and got in some rather serious trouble when a random lurker from a different state took offense to how she wrote about her students in a post and forwarded her negative posts to her principal and superintendent. He followed up with phone calls and threatened to go to the press if they didn't take action. Just some stupid, random lurker. She immediately erased her blog (and the cache) and went private for a couple years. She's only recently returned to an open blogging format, but she doesn't mention anything about her name, her family, where she teaches, etc. She cleaned all identifiers from her blog.
I understand that private blogs are a pain. I got worried that people would be able to track down me and my family, so I decided to go private. The sad thing is that I still can't rant about my family, because some of them read my blog. It would be nice to have the control over who can read things or not. Good idea.
It's hard. Part of me is so private that I would never want some random stranger, co-workers, boss, family member to read and the other part of me is such a lurker that I get so upset when the blogs of other people are private. But in reality I think everything should probably be private and have all my stuff on private...you just never know who is reading it and when it will come back to bite you in the butt.
i have heard about people tracking others and their blogs down just to leave nasty comments, etc. i guess thats why i choose the cloak of anonymity. as tough as i am(or can be) i just dont want the open judgment of others.you are brave to be so honest and open. private blogs kind of bug me too, but most of them want to share w/ friends and family, but dont want to be exposed to the world. i love the possibility of someone clicking "next" and coming across my blog. fun, huh?
I agree that private blogs are annoying in their own right from an administrative perspective. However, it was never a question for us. We didn't want any random people reading our stuff. It was set up to keep our friends and family informed of wedding and honeymoon travels so that no one would bug us! The idea of random work people reading it, even though there's nothing remotely scandalous on it was truly unappealing. Plus I feel like it says "rob me" when we talk about being out of town for days at a time. I'm also convinced that my co workers would think I'm a raging alcoholic with the amount of wine we consume! We even went so far as turning comments off, because I really don't need my mom or mother-in-law adding things in about our travels and whatnot!
don't make it private Lisa, I always enjoy you,unless of course you send me an invite, ;)
My family uses wordpress, which is a different system for blogging. I know that you can label posts as private which only lets those who have logged in with passwords to see that entry. My husband is the computer person in the family so I am not sure how to set it up, if you are interested let me know and I can inquire further about it.
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